FISHGOD Volume 1 Manga Review (Spoiler‑Free)

Synopsis

Ten years ago, Jaytle Nish’s parents were eaten by kaigyo: dog-sized fish that eat buildings and occasionally people. Now he works at the Kaigyo Elimination Center, hoping that he might one day find the masked man behind the fish that killed his family. Instead, he meets Kasaco, an intimidating older woman with amnesia who beats and eats kaigyo with the help of her super-strong umbrella. What will these two find when they go fishing for trouble?

Let’s go grab some grub

I’ll give FISHGOD this: It has an intriguing title. The moment I saw it, I couldn’t help but ask: Who is a FISHGOD? What is a FISHGOD? While I’m no closer to the answer after reading the first volume, I do appreciate just how weird kaigyo are as adversaries. They don’t have legs and prefer concrete to meat, but they’re just tenacious enough to be dangerous. Their low power levels give this book the feel of actual pest extermination—even more so than comparable series like Chainsaw Man.

The world that the kaigyo inhabit, though, isn’t particularly fleshed out. While there are individual details I liked, such as the use of blunt weapons in kaigyo hunting, none of them cohere into anything specific. Neither do the other, more random details, like the presence of the elf-like Eisha Tribe in an otherwise mundane setting. I wouldn’t even say that the kaigyo are always relevant to the stories collected in this volume. You could replace them with giant rats and not lose much, even if fish are inherently funnier.

That’s no human-eating kaigyo…

Chlona’s art is an interesting mixed bag. Her linework is much thicker than is typical for manga. The characters give off a goth vibe with their eyeliner and outfits which reminds me of Atsushi Kaneko or Douman Seiman. Jaytle’s beauty mark and dreadlocks, for instance, immediately set his design apart from other manga heroes. Then again, I also wouldn’t be surprised if Chlona’s work (originally published via Pixiv) is part of a larger Japanese webcomic artist scene that I have yet to dig into. As always, I’m happy to see publications like Manga Mavericks Books expanding our knowledge of manga in their choices of what to license and publish.

By that same principle, though, FISHGOD is not very functional as an action comic. Chlona has just two or three reliable angles in her pocket for characters thumping kaigyo with maces. Her designs always look stiff between movements, even though they are convincing in profile. As a result, the kaigyo hunting feels more like disjointed random encounters in a video game than proper setpieces. For something so central to the comic, I’d like these sequences to feel more satisfying on the page.

It’s a…kaigyo-eating human!!

That might be fine if FISHGOD had better character writing. And to be fair, the book has at least one memorable character in Kasaco. As an older woman who loves alcohol, picks her nose in public, and has a bizarre but cool fashion sense, she’s nearly able to carry the book by herself. In this case, it’s necessary, because nobody else in the cast has the same spark that she does. The protagonist Jaytle is set on revenge, and his coworker Ranna has a crush on him, and the non-kaigyo villains could have been recycled from any other action manga.

Manga series don’t need complex characters in order to be successful. What they do need, though, are characters with specificity. For instance, in the Shonen Sunday series Kekkaishi, the protagonist Yoshimori Tsumimura loves making castle cakes. The artist Yellow Tanabe uses this seemingly quirky detail to indicate to the reader that Yoshimori wants more out of life than just to follow in his family’s spirit-hunting footsteps.

Jaytle’s love of cooking, on the other hand, doesn’t say anything about his character (at least in this volume). The lack of economy certainly adds to FISHGOD’s charmingly ramshackle vibe, but it also doesn’t do anything to distinguish it among the ocean of supernatural extermination manga with interchangeable leads.

Verdict

Where does that leave this book? Well, I like the covers that pop with vibrant colors. (The interior drawings, by comparison, are in black and white, as they are on Pixiv.) I suspect my friends in the independent comics scene would be tempted if they saw Chlona’s stickers for sale at a comics festival. As for the comic, while the aesthetic is strong and the kaigyo are a fun concept, the series hasn’t come together for me yet as of this first volume. It reads like an early work by an artist learning how to tell a story in real time. I’d be happy to follow along if it were a free webcomic. As a paid graphic novel, though, that’s a different matter.

With that in mind, I’m willing to believe that FISHGOD could improve. Chlona already has a strong vision for what she wants from the book’s aesthetic. Adding some characters that have good scene chemistry with Kasaco, or coming up with creative scenarios to deploy kaigyo, could work wonders. As of this moment, though, the series isn’t there yet. Here’s hoping future volumes rise from the oceans to prove me wrong.

If you like FISHGOD, Volume 1, you might also like…

• Search and Destroy by Atsushi Kaneko
• Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida
• Wet Moon by Sophie Campbell

Credits

Writer/Artist: Chlona
Translation: Trish Ledoux Yoshida
Editing: Erica Friedman
Cover Design: Teresa (Katy) Castillo
Prepress Technician: Jeanthrix Andes
Published in English by Manga Mavericks Books

Thank you to Manga Mavericks Books for providing us with a review copy. Receiving this copy did not affect the reviewer’s opinions as expressed here.

Article edited by: Anne Estrada